1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to information systems for commercial real estate, in particular, building ownership, unit or suite ownership, asset management, financial institutions, real estate brokerages, architecture, and building measurement. More particularly the present disclosure relates to interactive stacking plans for the customized visualization of buildings, its occupants, and other real estate information pertaining thereto.
2. Related Art
Property management, particularly that involving commercial real estate such as office buildings, retail space, industrial facilities, apartment buildings, and so forth, encompasses diverse functions performed by several different parties. Fundamentally, a commercial real estate lease involves a tenant or owner that occupies the space/property of an owner in exchange for the payment of rent or payment for purchase. However, between the tenant and occupier owner and the building owner, there may be a broker that serves as an intermediary with respect to marketing and sales of property, unit or suite, and handles the detailed contractual negotiations with the tenant or suite, unit owner on behalf of either the building owner or the tenant or current unit owner. This may apply to purchase transactions between owners and buyers of a suite or unit, governmental agencies, municipalities, or entities using the information for tracking purposes.
There may be a property manager that tracks occupancy and availability to correctly and most efficiently allocate available space to existing and new tenants, units for purchase or occupied. The property manager may also be involved with architects and engineers in the planning, designing, and customizing the space as desired by the tenant or unit owner. Other functions such as maintenance and operations may be provided, as well as management of the property-level financial matters including collection of rent payments, collection of deposit for purchase and/or collection of mortgage payments and disbursements to third party service providers.
Where a building owner holds a number of different properties or units/suites for investment purposes, asset managers may be engaged thereby. In particular, the asset managers may perform short and long term financial planning/forecasting, oversee new constructions and acquisitions, as well as dispose of existing units/suites and properties failing to meet financial performance objectives. The management complexity, and hence the need for dedicated asset managers, may increase with the addition of further properties across disparate cities, counties, states, and countries into the portfolio.
Each of the aforementioned parties involved in commercial real estate have a need for updated and accurate information regarding the properties of interest. For instance, the broker depends on knowing which of the spaces or unit in the buildings are available to potential clients, as well as how much space in which configuration, so that a space meeting the client's exact needs can be offered for lease or purchase. The property manager likewise depends on vacancy and occupancy information for planning and allocation tasks. These functions oftentimes require a high level of detail including the exact measurements of square footage or square meters from a building calculation report and the floor drawings of the leased or purchases and available spaces. Furthermore, information unrelated to physical space allocation, such as lease terms, purchase agreements, contracts documents, cost of operations, and the like may also be needed by the property manager. In customizing the leased space for a tenant, besides the property manager, the subcontracted architects and engineers also requires building and tenant improvement drawings and occupancy related information. Such extensive levels of detail, however, may not be needed at higher management levels such as the asset manager or the owner, and a concise visual overview of the building and its occupancy may suffice.
One of the most common ways in which space and occupancy in buildings is represented is a stacking plan or diagram, which is a two-dimensional chart divided into floors of the building. Each floor depicts the tenants or units thereof and their respective leased or purchased square footage or square meter as blocks. For simpler buildings with only a few floors and tenants or occupants, stacking plans or diagrams are developed in spreadsheet applications based on tables that contain accounting information. Each cell within the table may be representative of a space, or units of space proportionally occupied by the tenant or occupant owner, and may be color-coded based on lease expiration dates, ownership or other metrics. Aside from being able to edit the information in the spreadsheet by virtue of being opened in a spreadsheet application, there is little interactivity, and additional information that would otherwise be useful for the aforementioned management functions is not immediately accessible. Along these lines, making substantial changes tends to be a cumbersome process or impossible. For buildings or properties of higher complexity, dedicated stacking plan applications with additional functionality beyond what is possible with spreadsheets are also available.
Although various development efforts have been directed to improved data sharing and consistency with respect to updates to stacking plan, existing solutions remain deficient in several ways. As mentioned above, personnel at different management or ownership levels have access to and have a need for varying levels of detail, but a unified and consistent presentation thereof is currently not possible, especially in real time. Furthermore, any discrepancies between different sources of this information are unaccounted for. Accordingly, for these reasons and more, there is a need in the art for improved interactive building stacking plans.